The old garbage transfer station on the Upper East Side

The city’s trash is one step closer to being stowed on the Upper East Side.

Having cleared heavy community opposition, the city issued a request for bids to build a $125 million waste transfer station on the East River at 91st Street, Crain’s reported.

Upper East Siders had fought the plan, claiming the waste transfer site would pose health risks to children who play at nearby recreation space, the Asphalt Green, and residents of several public housing projects, and eventually filed a suit to block the proposal. [more]

The Municipal Art Society of New York has released its top 11 initiatives for 2011, on which it plans to focus its advocacy and programming efforts this year. First on the list of priorities is completing the redevelopment of Moynihan Station and Hudson Yards, followed by the preserving the Garment District as an “ecosystem for the fashion industry,” crafting a plan for interim housing in case a natural disaster strikes the city and rethinking the future of public housing. Also on the list were NYU’s expansion, the next phase of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC and Coney Island. Click here for the full rundown. TRD [more]

The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation is on target for all their PlaNYC goals, Commissioner Adrian Benepe told American City, a magazine which promotes economic growth. Since many of the early-action aspects of PlaNYC were in parks, the department was able to accomplish a lot, Benepe said. As part of its goal to have a park or playground within a 10 minute walk of every New Yorker, the department has transformed 165 part-time schoolyards into full-time playgrounds and there’s been a 16.5 percent increase in the number of playgrounds overall. Another big project of the parks department is the creation or enhancement of major regional parks in eight neighborhoods across the city. [more]

Ocean Breeze Park

Ground was broken today at the $70 million Ocean Breeze Track and Field
Complex at Ocean Breeze Park in Staten Island, one of eight regional
parks being improved as part of PlaNYC and the first public indoor
track and field facility in the borough. The 135,000-square-foot
complex in South Beach will feature a 200-meter eight-lane track, two
long jump pits, a pole vault, a high jump and two shot-put areas. The
facility, which will have seating for 2,500 spectators, will be located
on a 10-acre parcel of the 110-acre Ocean Breeze Park. Construction is
slated for completion by the end of 2012. Other city parks that will be
developed as part of PlaNYC are the High Bridge and Fort Washington
Park in Manhattan; Soundview Park in the Bronx; McCarren Pool and
Calvert Vaux Park in Brooklyn; and Highland Park and Rockaway Beach in
Queens. TRD

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From left: Michael Bloomberg and William Thompson

A camera lens analogy might help voters understand where Michael Bloomberg and William Thompson, who are New York’s main mayoral candidates, stand on key real estate issues ahead of tomorrow’s election. Bloomberg, the Republican incumbent, seems to favor a wide-angle approach, as his sweeping rezoning of a fifth of the city, or 8,400 blocks over eight years in office, would indicate. Focused on creating denser, more transit-oriented development, according to his PlaNYC, which was unveiled in 2007, the city has famously paved the way for homes to be built into once-industrial swaths of land, notably along the Williamsburg waterfront in Brooklyn. [more]